60 A History of Judaism
Garizein’. On the Jewish side, the early rabbinic attitude to Samaritans
reflected the same ambivalence. When, for instance, three eat together,
the Mishnah requires the saying of a communal grace after meals even
‘[if one that ate was] a Cuthite’. But rabbinic ambivalence did not
extend to the validity of worship on Mount Gerizim which (unlike
Leontopolis) was simply seen as wrong, or was ignored, by other Jews.
In practice Samaritans were treated by Jews as a separate, and often
hostile, ethnic group. Jews did not become Samaritans, nor did Samari-
tans ever become Jews.^30
Synagogue
Josephus stressed to readers of Against Apion that Moses, as the best of
legislators, took care to ensure that all Jews knew what the law entailed:
He left no pretext for ignorance, but instituted the law as the finest and most
essential teaching material; so that it would be heard not just once or twice
or a number of times, he ordered that every seven days they should abandon
their other activities and gather to hear the law, and to learn it thoroughly
and in detail. That is something that all [other] legislators seem to have
neglected ... Were anyone of us to be asked about the laws, he would recount
them all more easily than his own name. So, learning them thoroughly from
the very first moment of consciousness, we have them, as it were, engraved
on our souls ... As for the habits of daily life: that everything should have
piety as its goal, one could gather even from women and slaves.^31
Josephus doubtless exaggerated the extent of ignorance about their
own laws to be found in other nations. But it is true enough that the
synagogue, as an institution for mass adult religious education, was
unparalleled in the ancient world before Christianity. Philo took a char-
acteristically philosophical stance in describing such education, noting
that the Jews ‘have houses of prayer and meet together in them, particu-
larly on the sacred sabbaths when they receive as a body a training in
their ancestral philosophy’. But the author of the Acts of the Apostles
put the matter more directly: ‘in every city, for generations past, Moses
has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sab-
bath in the synagogues.’^32
An inscription from Jerusalem, dated to the first century ce, recalls
the dedication of a synagogue, hostel and other installations by a cer-
tain Theodotus, son of Vettenus, described as ‘priest and archisynagogos